


Ultimate Reunion

by froootbat



Category: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:34:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28288500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/froootbat/pseuds/froootbat
Kudos: 5





	Ultimate Reunion

“WE’LL END DANGANRONPA WITH OUR OWN HANDS!”

And for a second, the world seemed to stop. Like Tsumugi Shirogane was even able to put a pause on reality itself. Silence. Cheering. The beam of the spotlight was absolutely blinding. Everything felt white and black all at once. What truly was hope? What was despair? Was there a middle ground? All thoughts of that had left Shuichi Saihara’s mind altogether. As they casted their votes, everything felt so… incomplete. Like this couldn’t possibly be the end. How could this be the end? They wouldn’t play along anymore. Not him, not Maki Harukawa, not Himiko Yumeno. The detective couldn’t even bring himself to look at the others, not out of embarrassment, but pure numbness. 

Kaede.

That was the problem. He did all of this… but he lost her. The ray of hope that shone down on the academy. Not academy. Goddammit, Saihara. It’s a set. It’s fake. Kaede Akamatsu wasn’t real. None of it was real. But that couldn’t be right, could it? What they had was real. It had to be. He reflected once more on the way their hands touched as they sat in that empty classroom. Tsumugi said that she had made it all up, but that wasn’t right. Tsumugi was a kid, just like they were. This had to be more real than they let on. 

But time wasn’t frozen forever. It couldn’t be frozen forever, and the world, no matter how real it was, proceeded onwards. They were being whisked away to the school. The set. The set of the school. Ultimate destruction, huh? What was the point of Danganronpa anyways? Was the death of four more people what the public truly wants? 

Some sick people they must be, he huffed. As the world caved in around them, he couldn’t help but look directly at Tsumugi. My god, she looked so scared. She couldn’t have known this was about to happen, could she? Or she was a much better actor than he had originally thought when she revealed herself. Maybe cosplaying was a strong suit above acting. Or worse, she was actually scared. Seeing her like that made his heart ache, in a way he didn’t quite expect. He wasn’t even paying attention to himself at this point, just looking at the girl before him, sadly waving, as if she had lost everything she had worked so hard for. What advantage did she truly have, anyways? She lost, too.  
一  
She lost, too. This was true. As Shuichi’s words rang in Tsumugi’s head, she had finally registered this. To tell the truth, she didn’t know what she was doing either. However, one thing was true in her mind. She had a hunch she had lost her own memories too. Were her memories of signing on falsified by the flashback lights as well too? Interning at Team Danganronpa? Conflicting recollections made her feel like her brain was about to implode. The cheering of the audience almost felt like hollow mockery to her. They were laughing. They were laughing and pointing because she had failed them all. The lights that illuminated in her eyes were like another flashback light, except nothing followed. Darkness. Emptiness. Tsumugi worked so hard, and she lost it all to the detective. The detective.

There was a clear sense of envy in her mind for him. His innocence was something she so desperately craved. How she wished that she wasn’t forced into the role of the mastermind. Throughout the game, she kept telling herself how much she wanted this. The hole in her heart grew continually empty however, as she was forced to pull the strings by something much bigger than herself. If she was another participant, she knew she would have befriended him. There was this… look in his eye, that made her want to put her hands to her chest and smile. Of course, he was a fictional character. That’s how Tsumugi got about fictional characters. But was he…? She had checked over this plotline with the team, but she had this gut impression that there was something off. Something they were hiding from her. 

This is it. As they were whisked away to the exterior of the school, she felt this intense sorrow. It consumed her soul. She wanted to spend her last minutes in her favorite cosplay, her Junko Enoshima cosplay, but.. even that felt so empty. So unfulfilling. How truly unfortunate. Maybe last minute she could ask the managers to change her death. Maybe she could get into her Kyoko Kirigiri cosplay and do After School Lesson. Make it work. One Woman Army? Strand of Agony? It would be far too repetitive to use Kirumi Tojo’s execution once more. It was too late. She was meant to die like Junko Enoshima. Of course, death is so subjective. Even if she survived, Tsumugi would be a failure. Unable to keep it going past six chapters. Maybe it was her heart. Her sympathy for the detective. Her regret for the pianist. The pianist.

And everything went black.

一  
Lights came up. The sudden whirring of machinery. Walls raised. The bubble that surrounded the school had suddenly lifted, revealing the backstage of the set that they were never able to see. Behind the three survivors, a crane lifted up the metal creation that supposedly crushed Tsumugi, revealing her intact. Two people ran up to her, offering her wet towels to clean her face and hands. She seemed… distant. Like this wasn’t something she expected. Shock consumed the detective’s entire body. Everything felt so surreal that he could barely acknowledge the idea that she wasn’t really dead. Did she herself really think she was dying? How much did she truly know, after all? Wait. If she wasn’t really dead, then maybe...

“Shuichi!” 

What? That voice… it was so familiar. Like an old record. Like honey, and pink and purple sunrises, and… the piano. It couldn’t be. She was gone. He watched it happen. He saw it all… no matter how much he tried to look away, he saw it. It was real, and she was gone and she was right in front of him all over again. This broke him. Throughout the whole trial, he had remained so strong and iron-willed. He had held it together. He promised to be strong for everyone that he had lost. He was fighting for all of them. Did he succeed? What was truly real?

“Kaede?”

More people began to approach the quartet. As tears welled in his eyes, he saw a blurred purple figure pull a smaller figure clad in red into a hug. He could barely make out the words, but he knew what was being said. 

“Maki roll!” 

“Hey! Fuckin’ move it!” Shoving Kaito out of the way, a blonde figure in all pink approached the assassin. “You kicked ass! God, you might be as much一 no, more of a gorgeous girl genius than myself! And that’s sayin’ something!”

Two figures approached Himiko. “Nya-ha-ha! I knew you could make it!”

“Himiko! Oh, Himiko, you’re amazing! You were so much better than that degenerate male Shuichi!”

Hah. Ouch. He didn’t really care, though. Not at all. By this point, he had pulled the blonde in her arms with no intent of letting go. The reason he was so strong was because of her ever-so-endless optimism. And still he thought he’d never see her again. That was the pessimism he couldn’t kick. That’s why he needed her. Without Kaede, he was… one part of a whole. The joy that he felt in seeing her once more was so inexplicable. Her face is what motivated him to survive, and here she was, so alive, so well, so safe一

But it could be better. Everyone had already ran up to each other and checked up on eachother, concerned ‘victims’ and ‘blackeneds’ and ‘survivors’ (which all felt like such useless labels at this point, they were just… a class. A unit. A cast?) running their fingers through their hair, setting hands on foreheads, checking pulses, hugging and sobbing. Except for one person. Shuichi broke away from the hug, turning to the blue-haired girl standing alone. It seemed that nobody had made the same deduction as he had. That is: she didn’t want this more than anyone else did. 

She didn’t want this at all.

“Hey. Tsumugi.” He motioned for the cosplayer to come over. A smile formed on her face, for a second, before she frowned again. Fear that he would just yell at her. Berate her for everything she did. And he should, shouldn’t he? He should be mad at her. But he couldn’t bring himself to be upset. 

She hung her head. “I… have as much idea as to what is going on as you do.” Her eyes were wet with tears, and her face wet with a mixture of blood and cleaning solution. Honesty. Tsumugi truly thought, in that moment, that she was going to die like the rest of them. Team Danganronpa had puppeteered her just like everyone else. She was as innocent as the rest of them. What could she have done differently? It all felt so horrible. Danganronpa was something that she had always loved. She had cosplayed it since she could sew with her own two hands, and watched every playthrough she could find, and watched it on the TV, and done everything she could, but when she was put in some false version of control, it felt so sullied. It was… she didn’t want to hurt anyone. She just wanted to experience the thing she loved most first hand. Or was that another false memory too?

Neither of the two people standing before her said anything in particular. They each took one hand, and squeezed them tight. When that distance felt too far, they piled into a hug, holding each other as close as they could get. And for a second, everything was okay. Just the three of them. They were safe, they were okay. Nobody could hurt them anymore.


End file.
